The proliferation of information processing solutions available to a business enterprise has proven advantageous to most modern enterprises, providing an opportunity to apply the benefits of computer processing technology to most every area of the enterprise and accordingly to better service customers in a more efficient manner. However, the value provided by these myriad advances in information technology has come at a cost, specifically the burden of managing the many disparate IT solutions that have been integrated into different areas of the typical business enterprise.
As IT expands throughout the enterprise, demand for IT consultant services has concomitantly surged to address the burgeoning complexities of managing the corporate IT infrastructure. Within this growing market the complexities inherent in effectively identifying pertinent IT solutions required by a business customer and mapping those IT needs to the skills and solutions offered by a particular solution provider, the so-called Business Solutions Assessment (BSA) process, has proven to be an equally complicated endeavor, mismanagement of which may translate directly into lost business opportunities for a solution provider. As the types of IT solutions available to the business customer continually expand, IT solution providers are increasingly challenged by encounters with potential customers utilizing technologies which are outside the traditional areas supported by the provider. Alternatively, the success of a multi-faceted solutions provider may be impeded by limitations in the solutions experience of a particular marketing representative in contact with a potential customer. For example, a customer who has clearly defined needs in the area of business intelligence (BI) may not be well-served by a marketing professional with experience in the area of server consolidation solutions notwithstanding the fact that his company does in fact provide BI solutions. Consequently, a successful BSA implementation would provide readily accessible support to enable a marketing professional to draw upon the entire breadth of the solution set offered by his company.
In the typical BSA scenario, the potential customer faces a number of IT challenges, some more pressing than others, in various areas of IT. It would be advantageous to enable a solutions provider representative to prioritize these needs by assessing their impact on the customer's business and to map these prioritized needs against the solutions provided by his/her company to determine which needs best matched the solutions provided thereby. At the onset of the BSA undertaking is an initial customer engagement process. During this critical period, the ability to establish credibility with the customer, and to ensure that all parties involved have a clear understanding of the business benefits which will result from the engagement and their relevance to the needs of the customer is of paramount importance. Ultimately, it is in both the customer's and provider's best business interest to qualify the project prior to investing too much resource in an endeavor. Accordingly, the ideal solution assessment process will enable the customer to make informed decision about the proffered solutions early in a project, while establishing the proper expectations, roles and responsibilities for all parties involved. Often this will entail a proof of concept undertaking to demonstrate the feasibility of the project and the creation of a high-level workplan for the project.
The ideal BSA process addresses questions regarding the risk to be shared between the customer and the solution provider, the resources required, the approximate cost in money and time and the reasonably expected benefits of the endeavor. Currently, these issues are addressed in an ad-hoc fashion based upon the skills of the particular marketing team and the business knowledge and experience of the customer involved in the undertaking. It is clear that a well-articulated approach to this process would better serve all parties involved.
Other solutions have proposed the use of computer-based expert system to provide a ready interface for a consultation client. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,006,998 entitled Computer System With Easy Input Means For Consultation, teaches a computer system suitable for consultation in such a case where plans are to be created while a concurrent dialogue is undertaken with a client asking for advice. It distinguishes over prior art system which required that a full set of customer inputs were initially secured prior to providing a response to the customer, which suffer the disadvantage of not having facilities for addressing the customers questions which may arise in providing input to the system. The patent further teaches the inclusion of advertisements within the series of interactive inquiries addressed to the client which may additionally be responded to by the client. Accordingly, the patent is focused on the facilitation of the interaction between a computer and a client, but fails to teach the implementation of a system or method for engagement with a client wherein increasingly detailed client data regarding a potential IT solution is iteratively applied against a knowledge base to enable generation an IT business solution proposal. In other areas, U.S. Pat. No. 5,680,305 covering a System And Method For Evaluating Real Estate, teaches providing a quantitative evaluation of a real estate interest owned by a business entity via the processing of numerical data assigned to various real estate valuations such as utilization indices, and revenues of the entity owning the property to calculate a score attributable to the property, which reflects a quantitative evaluation of the real estate. This patent is a specific expert system tailored to address the intricacies of the real estate industry to place a numerical valuation on the on a given property, it does not address the complex issues involved in exploring the various facets of a customer's IT infrastructure as well as the business environment and needs goals of that customer to devise IT solutions which best meet the determined needs.
From the foregoing it can be seen that a need exists for an IT-based solution which addresses these and other related issues concerning the BSA. Such a solution would use IT in the form of an automate set of electronic questionnaires tied to modelling tools and a knowledge base to assist in addressing these issues, and provide a manageable framework to a systematic BSA process. More specifically, the ideal automated solution should enable the implementation of a series of assessment processes designed to ensure that the proper analysis is conducted in the course of undertaking a Business Solution Assessment.
While the present invention deals specifically with an automated method, system and product for providing IT solution proposals via the provision of an inventive BSA process flow, it is contemplated herein that such inventive techniques can be and are readily applied to the determination of any type of business solution offered by a solutions provider, be it in the area IT, plant security, personnel administration, financial services, or site maintenance services, etc. The sole limitation of the present inventive process is the ability of the solution provider to glean the appropriate information from a potential customer at the appropriate point in the customer engagement, and to apply the obtained information in a meaningful manner to its set of available solutions and the data derived from previous customer engagements which is stored in its knowledge-base.